To:
Blue Sky Energy: [email protected]
Kibbutz Eilot: [email protected] and [email protected]
EDF: [email protected]
My Serious Concerns regarding the proposed Wind Farm near Eilat, Israel
I have just returned from Eilat, Israel after taking part in “Champions of the Flyway,” one of the most important events in the birding conservation calendar worldwide. While in Eilat we enjoyed an amazing and unique variety and abundance of birdlife throughout Eilat and the southern Arava region. This area is one of the most crucial bottlenecks on the Eurasian-African migration route with raptors, passerines, waders, waterfowl and seabirds making up a large percentage of the total bird population of Europe and western Asia. It’s an area that I have dreamed of visiting for decades and it didn’t disappoint at all.
I am writing to express my deep concerns about the plan to build a wind farm not only at the “bottleneck” of this flyway but also in close proximity to the main “migration magnet” that attracts so many of these migrating birds. I have seen the area where you propose to build a windfarm and it was crammed full of migratory birds – if built, your windfarm will cause huge ecological damage because of its location.
I’d like to make the point that I am very strongly in favour of renewable energy and fully support a move away from fossil fuels, but these things need to be put in the right places, and not the wrong ones. Your plans are for the right technology in the wrong place. I’d rather see more wind turbines go up in my local area (I can see over a dozen from my house in England) than know that they have been constructed in this very sensitive and ecologically rich part of Israel.
I hope you will reconsider your plans to build a wind farm near Eilat, and choose a different location which will not be a mortal threat to the migratory birds of Europe and western Asia.
Yours sincerely
Dr Mark Avery
[registration_form]
If other people wanted to write to express their views about this project’s potential impact on migratory birds, where would they write Mark? Imagine there are many who share your concerns…
Jo – the emails are at the top of the post – although the edf one has bounced back at me.
thank you!
I may be wrong as far as the following information is concerned as it’s somewhat dated. A few years ago, whilst at Eilat, I discussed the question of development and what that might mean in terms of potential encroachment on the reserve on the outskirts (then ) of town. I got the firm impression that there is no Local Planning system as we know it in Israel and that things are a bit of a free for all. Such may have changed, ( perhaps this can be checked ? ) but otherwise it is a case of appealing to the conscience of the commercial company concerned ( as you’ve done ) in the hope of bringing about change. More of us doing the same thing will help as I’m sure there are many within your readership, like me, who have enjoyed visits to this tremendous area.
I presume that the ecological cost of building illegal settlements in the occupied territories is somehow not worth a mention and probably did not enter your thinking when you accepted an invitation to Isreal.
Well I thought of going down that road reference “no Local Planning system” and the lack of necessity for one when you can just acquire more land by stealing it from your neighbours but I didn’t because there is perhaps more head-scratching to be done as to why this is the right technology at all at all when PV arrays in the desert in such a nice sunny spot would seem like a better idea. Certainly more reliable than, say, Basingstoke